I’m a big fan of John Oliver taking over the hosting duties on ‘The Daily Show With Jon Stewart’ for several reasons … he’s funny, he’s a nice change of pace from Stewart’s regular routines, and he’s a reminder of when ‘Community’ was a good show. On top of that, there’s the joy of discovery, watching him figure out some of the finer points of sharing news clips and facepalming about them as he goes. A good example: WWE adding “half-naked men fighting” to political discourse.

If you don’t watch Raw (and haven’t totally given up on this blog over it yet), “Zeb Colter” is a fictional, nationalistic, racist and exclusionary character based on the real nationalistic, racist, exclusionary character playing him. He believes that illegal immigration is ruining our country and, for whatever reason, has chosen professional wrestling as his way to reach the masses. Yeah, I don’t know. Up until now he’s been managing an Oklahoman amateur wrestler turned giant Vader-Bomber Jack Swagger. Swagger’s had … some problems, so now Colter’s attached to Swiss superman Antonio Cesaro. The joke is that the guy who hates immigrants is supporting a guy from Europe. Wrestling jokes!

The WWE Raw announce team is having problems accepting this and won’t stop arguing about it, and John Oliver’s sub-in job gets name-dropped. On last night’s episode of ‘The Daily Show,’ Oliver responded. And by responded I mean “tore off his sleeves, held a toy belt and screamed in front of a wall of fire with WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley.”

Part of me likes this… part of me is wondering if this is one of those wwe 24/7 immersion tactics for a gimmick summerslam match leading to Zeb Coulter vs Mick Foley w/ John Oliver in a match where if Zeb wins Foley will have to write a children’s book about the dangers of immigration and if Foley wins Zeb has to manage Hunico.

But on the actual topic, this is probably exactly the opening that the WWE needs in order to help satiate their sad, desperate, perpetual thirst for mainstream relevance. Subtract a million shitty top 40 radio hits, add a couple Daily Show appearances. I can live with that. It’s certainly better than all that Glenn Beck crap they tried earlier.

What makes this “work” so well is that Dutch Mantell (who, as far as I know, is unlike Zeb) is a great, great promo guy. Sure, he’s a heel, but he used to book and script shows in Puerto Rico for years. Part of me wonders if he had a hand in booking Monday. *shrug*